


Dark Matter's Women

by Radiolaria



Category: Dark Matter (TV)
Genre: Archived From Tumblr, Archived From onaperduamedee Blog, Fanwork Research & Reference Guides, Female Friendship, Gen, Meta Essay, Representation and Visibility, Representation vs. Visibility, Women Being Awesome, Women In Power
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-15
Updated: 2018-12-15
Packaged: 2019-09-18 18:00:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16999905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Radiolaria/pseuds/Radiolaria
Summary: An ode to the subtle female community building of the show.





	Dark Matter's Women

**Author's Note:**

> Originally published on Feb. 6, 2018 on [onaperduamedee](https://onaperduamedee.tumblr.com/post/164226142363/goodobservationshirley-onaperduamedee-keep).
> 
> I love these women so much.

> **_Why are you here?_ **

Communities of women are the social fabric of our world, and fiction should reflect it. Often, this depiction of female bonds is anecdotal; there are simply not enough women for them to develop any community. Often, women must provide a reason for their existence in the narrative and their relationships, as such, obey strict labelling – best friend, family, rival, mentor.

Dark Matter never really fell into that pattern. Women were just there, because they had ended up on the ship, like the male characters. Their path would cross and inevitably they would start spinning together; bonds, trust, tension. A community of women with no walls, accepting strangers, friends and foes, as they came to them. They were not kept in a gynaeceum, they were not isolated from one another; they were the fabric of the world. The Captain and the pilot were women who, in another life, had created together an entire species of liberated androids. The bridge between present and past was a teenage girl with lifetimes in her dreams. The leading fighter against the alien invasion would have been a woman ([x](https://twitter.com/BaronDestructo/status/940334530249900032)) - religious, lesbian, badass.

As the world was crushed by various forces - imperialism, corporatism and all-consuming alien greed -, Dark Matter still made room for a corporate shark to be rescued by and rescue crew members of the Raza, for a young woman to practice self-defense and discuss life with a prioress/bodyguard only passing in her life, for that same girl to introduce an android to the concept of consent, for women to pull men back into line, amused and accustomed – fiction should reflect the world after all -, for a dying captain to find solace in the memory of an almost lover, for the protagonist’s tragic backstory to be a tale of love and loss and big classic tropes usually reserved to men, for a machine’s right to define oneself to be accepted and even admired, for women to participate relentlessly and together to the action. The show never questioned the women’s presence anywhere, as enemies, friends, mysteries, passers-by and nameless figureheads.

They were here because they are everywhere.


End file.
